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"But man is not made for defeat," he said.

"A man can be destroyed but not defeated." I am sorry that I killed the fish though, he thought.

Now the bad time is coming and I do not even have the harpoon.

The dentuso is cruel and able and strong and intelligent.

But I was more intelligent that he was.

Perhaps not, he thought.

Perhaps I was only better armed.

"Don't think, old man," he said aloud. "Sail on this course and take it when it comes."

But I must think, he thought.

Because it is all I have left.

That and baseball.

I wonder how the great DiMaggio would have liked the way I hit him in the brain? It was no great thing, he thought.

Any man could do it.

But do you think my hands were as great a handicap as the bone spurs? I cannot know.

I never had anything wrong with my heel except the time the sting ray stung it when I stepped on him when swimming and paralyzed the lower leg and made the unbearable pain.

"Think about something cheerful, old man," he said. "Every minute now you are closer to home. You sail lighter for the loss of forty pounds."

He knew quite well the pattern of what could happen when he reached the inner part of the current. But there was nothing to be done now.

"Yes there is," he said aloud. "I can lash my knife to the butt of one of the oars."

So he did that with the tiller under his arm and the sheet of the sail under his foot.

"Now," he said. "I am still an old man. But I am not unarmed."

The breeze was fresh now and he sailed on well. He watched only the forward part of the fish and some of his hope returned.

It is silly not to hope, he thought. Besides I believe it is a sin. Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it.

I have no understanding of it and I am not sure that I believe in it.

Perhaps it was a sin to kill the fish.

I suppose it was even though I did it to keep me alive and feed many people.

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